Museum Hopper

I was in a suburb of New York City two weeks ago and had to get to the Morgan Library .  It has been a number of years since I have been able to make it there and it is probably my favorite place in New York.  This aptly was visit #10! It is peaceful and full of light in the museum.  It was busy in there, but still quiet.  I continue to love how elegantly the museum meshed contemporary with the traditional elements. Not sure if you can see it, but the grates are full of birds I focused on my visit on three major exhibits: John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal , Verdi: Creating Otello and Falstaff-Highlights from the Ricordi Archives , and the main library wing . I really like the John Singer Sargent oil painting portraits.  He is quite well known for these paintings that he completed in the early portion of the 1900s including many of the souls and their children.  He painted so many famous people of that time period.  He ended up swit...

After visiting the Castelo dos Mouros , we headed to the Palace of Pena.   As I look back on this trip, we should have considered flopping these...potentially.  While we were able to get on the bus right away up to the palace, we ended up in a 30 minute line to get inside the palace.  We had bought tickets in advance -- through the same site we bought the Castelo dos Mouros tickets.  I am not sure if we had gotten there earlier, would we have been able to avoid the line. To get up to the palace, we ended up purchasing the bus ticket.  It was about 2-3 EUR each and included a round trip up to the palace and back.  The buses seemed to be coming rather frequently.  After just climbing up to the Mouros, it was nice to sit on the bus for the fairly steep climb up to the Palace of Pena.  We did not use the bus on the way back, opting to walk down instead.  I was pretty pleased with that decision. Jason waited in line and let me ge...

We headed to the Museo de Arte Precolombino (MAP) in Cusco after dinner one night.  Oh, what a joy!  We had seen the Museo Incan earlier that day.  The MAP was a breath of fresh air. The MAP is organized and coordinated by the Museo Larco in Lima as well.  It's pedigree shows. The museum is organized with very well edited rooms.  The museum is in an old Spanish style with a courtyard inside.   If we had planned better, we would have eaten dinner here as well.  They have a glassed in restaurant, which had a very cool atmosphere and feeling. Each room was themed and so well edited.  It was open late and night and we were almost the only ones in there.   We could tell that what we were seeing in the museum was truly the best of the collection.  The descriptions were very helpful and the right.   I wish I had a little bit more to say, but hopefully the pictures speak for themselves!  I would...

On our way from our hotel in the Sacred Valley to the hotel in Cusco, we stopped at the Pisac .  Outside of Machu Picchu and Sacsayhuaman, I do believe that Pisac is the next most important ruin to visit.  We decided to drive to the top of it and then work our way through the top portion of the ruins.  The ruins are about a 15 minute drive outside of the market (which we had not realized).   Pisac is part of the Cusco ticket, so we were able to use that for entrance.  Jason made sure that we got the walking map this time!  Unfortunately, one of the main routes was closed, so we were unable to do the full "medium" length route. Our hike wasn't that far, but it definitely is important to continue to consider the altitude.  Pisac is higher than Machu Picchu although not quite as high as Cusco. We really enjoyed walking/hiking through this monument.  The Incans had many different uses for the ruins.  The first area...

It's hard to know where to even start with Machu Picchu .  My sister lives in Lima, Peru, so it was definitely about time to get to Machu Picchu.   I scoured the web pages and honestly, it seemed difficult to get there for under $350 USD per person.  Perhaps as a visitor I was seeing the tourist prices, but I had a hard time seeing how to do this "on our own" for less.  For example, the ticket to MP is ~$45 USD, the bus ticket up and back from Aguas Calientes was ~$30 USD (x2) each way and the train each way was ~$120 USD (x2).  The bus company has a virtual monopoly and the hike really didn't seem worth it.  It is not a pretty hike, it is fairly steep and there is altitude (although not as high as Cusco). We ended up booking a package through our hotel using their preferred travel agent, Venturia.  Honestly, we were not very impressed with them.  The initial few itineraries only left us two hrs at Machu Picchu.  That seemed ...